Where the bee-garden lay, under its sheltering crest of pine-wood, the April sunbeams seemed to gather, as water gathers in the lap of enclosing hills. Out in the lane the sweet hot wind sang in the hedgerows, and the white dust lifted under every footfall and went bowling merrily away on the breeze. But once among the crowding hives, you were launched on a still calm lake of sunshine, where the daffodils hardly swayed on their slender stems; and the smoke from the bee-master’s pipe, as he came down the red-tiled path, hung in the air behind him like blue gossamer spread to catch the flying bees.
As usual, the old bee-man had an unexpected answer ready to the most obvious question.
“When will the new honey begin to come in?” he said, repeating my inquiry. “Well, the truth is honey never comes into the hives at all; it only goes out. That’s the old mistake people are always falling into. Good bees never gather honey: they leave that to the wicked ones. If I had a hive of bees that took to honey-gathering, I should have to stop them, or end them altogether. It would have to be either kill or cure.”
He took a quiet whiff or two, enjoying the effect of this seeming paradox, then went on to explain.
“What the bees gather from the flowers,” said he, “is no more honey than barley and hops are beer. Honey has to be manufactured, first in the body of the bee, and then in the comb-cells. It must stand to brew in the heat of the hive, just as the wort stands in the gyle-tun; and when it is ready to be bunged down, before the bee adds the last little plate of wax to the cell-capping, she turns herself about and, as I believe, injects a drop of the poison from her sting—or seems to do so. Then it is real honey, but not before. Now, about these bad bees, the honey-gatherers—”
He stopped, putting his hand suddenly to his face. A bee had unexpectedly fastened her sting into his cheek. At the same moment another came at me like a spent shot from a gun, and struck home on my own face. The old bee-man took a hurried survey of his hives.
“Why,” said he, “as luck, or ill-luck, will have it, I think I can show you the honey-gatherers at work now. There’s only one thing that would make my bees wild on such a morning as this; and we must find out where the trouble is, and stop it.”
He was looking about him in every direction as he spoke; and at last, on the farther side of the bee-garden, seemed to make out something amiss. As we passed between the long rows of bee-dwellings every hive was the centre of its own thronging busy life. From each there was a steady stream of foragers setting outward into the brilliant sunshine, and as constant a current homeward, as the bees returned heavily weighed down under loads of golden pollen from the willows by the neighbouring riverside. But round the hive, near which the bee-master presently came to a halt, there was a very different scene enacting. The deep, rich note of labour was replaced by an angry hubbub of war. The alighting-board of the hive was covered with fighting bees; company launched against company; single combats to the death; writhing masses of bees locked together and tumbling furiously to the ground in every direction. The soil about the hive was already thickly strewn with the dead and dying: and the air, for yards round, was filled with the piercing note of the fray. It seemed as hopeless to attempt to stop the carnage as it was manifestly perilous to go near.
But the bee-master had his own short way with this, as with most other difficulties. He took up a big watering-can and filled it hastily from the butt close by.
“This hive is a weak stock,” he explained, “and it is being robbed by one of the stronger ones. That is always the danger in spring. We must try to drive the robbers home, and only one thing will do it. That is, a heavy rainstorm; and as there is no chance of getting the real thing, we must make one for ourselves.”